Category Archives: Framing

As I prep the studs for drywall I’ve been happy to find that most are straight and plumb — I haven’t had to shim them many of them. There were a few that were bowed pretty significantly in the kitchen, and because they butt right up against the chimney the only way to fix them was to plane them down. I am a big hand tool enthusiast but I’ve been so busy for the past 9 months working on the restoration that I’ve barely touched my hand planes. To remove the bow in these problem studs I used my jack plane vertically starting at the peak of the crown and then taking longer successive passes until the bow was gone. In the photo above you can see the fresh grain on the stud to the bottom right after I planed it down. Read More

The original kitchen door in our house is framed the same as all the other doors in the house: 7′ x 3′. The house is very compartmentalized, as it typically was back then, and we have been toying with the idea of trying to open up the kitchen a bit more to the rest of the house without disrupting the architectural flow too much. Below are some photos of the door frame and the hallway it sits in pre-renovation (kitchen door is on the left): Read More

In between the walls of the wood-panelled front room and the master bedroom there is quite a large space which is mostly unused. This is where the secret cabinet is housed (pictured below), but above and below it inside the wall there are huge spaces which were completely unused: Read More

The existing access hatch wasn’t framed very well. It was hard to tell if it was original, but the joist that was cut to make the hatch wasn’t supported very well back when they made it. We wanted to lengthen the access hatch and since we were also doing work on the wall directly below for the bathtub alcove, Papa Pope and I decided to reframe it using new 2×10″ lumber and joist hangers. Above is the finished product.

Papa Pope was in town visiting last week and we got a huge amount of work done. One of our projects was altering the floor plan of the bathroom slightly. Because our bathroom is so small we decided to sacrifice some of the room in the laundry room in order to build an alcove for the bathtub. Rather than just bumping the whole wall out the full width of the tub we designed an alcove that would give us 7.5′ of headroom, but that would still allow attic access and additional storage from the opposite side of the new alcove in the laundry room. Read More

About Project Pope

Project Pope documents Matt & Jess's restoration of a 1904 Tudor Revival home in the Pacific Northwest. Also included are some of Matt's woodworking projects, a bit of photography, and whatever else we think might be interesting. Enjoy!